The technology and innovation-focused search for a silver bullet for the WASH sector by the Gates Foundation is flawed, argues the director of a water NGO. Improving sanitation for people in developing countries requires person-to-person education within each community, writes Water 1st International's Marla Smith-Nilson in the Seattle Times. How many more people has the Gates Foundation given access to water and toilets as a result of its US$ 200 million expenditure over the past six years, asks Smith-Nilson?
I'd like some evidence that their approach is effective and not just driven by the desire to invent a philanthropic silver bullet. Meaningful results to me are how many women are no longer carrying water and how many people now use a toilet instead of defecating behind a bush?
Published on: 01/06/2011
The technology and innovation-focused search for a silver bullet for the WASH sector by the Gates Foundation is flawed, argues the director of a water NGO. Improving sanitation for people in developing countries requires person-to-person education within each community, writes Water 1st International's Marla Smith-Nilson in the Seattle Times. How many more people has the Gates Foundation given access to water and toilets as a result of its US$ 200 million expenditure over the past six years, asks Smith-Nilson?
I'd like some evidence that their approach is effective and not just driven by the desire to invent a philanthropic silver bullet. Meaningful results to me are how many women are no longer carrying water and how many people now use a toilet instead of defecating behind a bush?
What is really needed is the actual provision of safe water, sanitation and hygiene education, Smith-Nilson argues.
Innovation is accomplished through public-private partnerships; community commitment to long-term administration, operations and maintenance; and more recently through loan-based initiatives.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this global problem. There is no box that sits on a shelf with a device inside that will convince an Ethiopian mother that her child's diarrhea will stop if her family builds a toilet and routinely washes their hands, or will convince her husband that his return on investment of paying a water bill that allows his daughter to go to school instead of carrying water is 10 to 1 due to increased economic productivity.
Projects run by Water 1st have provided integrated WASH services to nearly 58,000 people in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Honduras and India over the past six years. The total investment involved was less that US$ 5 million, with an estimated per capita cost of US$ 75.
But there are critics of NGO approaches like that of Water 1st as well, like IRC's Triple-S project director Ton Schouten speaking at the IRC 2010 symposium:
Currently in many developing countries districts have fragmented services dependent on haphazard NGO projects with a tiny team of ill-equipped people struggling to provide district government services for the rest.[...] Appropriate technology or community management are not answers in themselves – the whole system from policy and regulation to financial planning, capacity strengthening, service levels and technology needs to be resolved.
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Read the full text of Marla Smith-Nilson's column [Another way to promote sanitation in developing countries, Seattle Times, 30 May 2011]
